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Women's rights in Iran

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Posted

I recently did a research paper, and it was probably the first time at my community college that I felt like some kind of college student or something. We were required to do a research paper on some topic related to the middle-east, for the middle-eastern history class I've been taking this semester. I wanted to post it here, for a couple reasons.

 

I'm proud of it, for one. I sourced four books (one of which was written by a former president of Iran), a television show, and national statistics reports. The internet was my least-used resource. I actually had to do research, which was actually a little fun, compared to the boring high-school level assignments I typically have. I think that these are important issues as well, and that we're not exposed to real-world problems and the workings behind them as much as we should be.

 

My topic was the effect of the Iranian Revolution on women's rights in Iran. It's not perfect, I slapped it together in like three days, but you know. Hopefully you learn something from it.

 

The Iranian Revolution's Lasting Effects on Women's Rights in Iran

 

I got a 90 on it btw.

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Posted

Interesting. I didn't know that women in Iran have been able to keep up the fight for so long and have had some minor victories. As for your actual writing, I'm in no position to comment on grammar or composition or any of that, but I was able to follow pretty well.

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Posted

I had a lot more mistakes before I posted this; I moderately edited it before uploading it. The points that were docked were half for weird grammatical/wording problems I somehow didn't catch despite how glaring they were. The other half were docked because my bibliography was organized wrong. It should have been in alphabetical order by author, whereas I organized them by order of appearance and medium, I think?

 

Also, I think there'll always be resistances and movements in places where injustice and oppression still happens.

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Posted

Very informative paper that talks about a connection most people don't realize exists. The only thing I worry about that I haven't mentioned previously is that when I write papers like this (illuminating connections that most people don't study) I end up getting a B or B+. History is a lot about interpretation, and if you're not making an intriguing argument about a historical character or event its not out of the question that you'll miss out on an A- or better grade. I personally think this is a good paper for a non-history major, but I worry about what your professors will think if they're like mine were.

 

Basically, it's solid with facts and argument structure but not intellectually enticing enough to warrant an A grade.

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Posted

It is grammerly good for the biggest bit of it that it was

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Posted

It was because I pretty much laid all my points down, then snapped them into different places like legos, not necessarily scanning through and proofreading each time. Then, I guess, I was too tired to proofread it a final time, and I just printed it out as-is. This copy doesn't have any of those mistakes, to the best of my knowledge.

 

But anyway, the point is that stuff's crazy in Iran, and in a lot of middle-eastern countries. There were quotes I left out from Bani-Sadr's book, which were both somewhat enlightening and a little disturbing. For instance, he said that the mullahs based their actions on retaining their power, yeah, but they based their rules not on what the Koran says, but what people say about the Koran. They also told people that guns were the most important thing, to defend the country for God or something. There were a lot of parallels to the religiously ignorant in the west. I didn't highlight the point enough, but the mullahs also scapegoat intellectuals heavily. The fact that they scapegoat the educated is really disturbing. Like, the religious and ignorant here do distrust science (when it suits their political beliefs) but I'm pretty sure they kind of understand that being educated is a positive thing?

 

Then again, this all goes back to a bunch of stuff that happened that pretty much gave the middle-east a distrust of the West, including its education. This class has been really informative to me. I think it's actually pretty annoying that we don't learn nearly enough about the middle-east, or why some of the people there are kind of angry at us, or who Saddam Hussein really even was. It really feels like there has been an actual effort to cover up all the tensions that happened before 9/11, or at least a huge imbalance in reporting all the stuff leading to it. I had no idea the middle-east was mad at us until they crashed a plane into a building, but they've been angry for centuries, and Muslim extremists committing jihad against us have been around since at least the 80s.

 

Killing people over religion is still pretty bad. I don't respect what they do at all, endorse it, or say they were justified, but we've been dicks to them for a long while. Like, you know how Germany got the short end of the stick after World War I? The middle-east got it just as bad, if not worse. After it was over the European powers pretty much decided to cut up parts of the middle-east and distribute power to the Allies, even though Woodrow Wilson, our acting president, said we shouldn't do the whole spoils-of-war thing. The Allies also, without even consulting with the middle-eastern countries, decided Palestine should be home of the Jews. In the simplest terms (I'm sure they might have been more angry about it) this didn't make any sense because it was a mostly Muslim area to begin with. Like 70-90% of its population was Muslim.

 

So there's this distrust that's rooted there, and it's understandable. A lot of this stuff has been pretty bogus. I just wish that it didn't mean that people get oppressed because of a distrust in anything associated with us.

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Posted (edited)

If I recall, the US made efforts to keep the Shah in power, and basically placed him in power in the first place. He was a puppet for the US. The US is fine with dealing with tyrants as long as it is profitable. Which is okay by me, actually. The meddling was actually pretty lame, though. Imperialism and meddling are terrible and have long-lasting consequences.

I feel like the essay is really informative, but it doesn't get to the point until like halfway in. I was always told to keep it brief for history reports. Idk. You can tell that you really got into the assignment, though.

Edited by Iargely Iegendry (see edit history)

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Posted

There were problems, because women's struggle wasn't very well-documented. They were definitively pawns and scapegoats, so yeah, a lot of it was backstory for the whole thing. I wish I could have quoted Bani-Sadr more. He had a lot more to say on the topic of women than the more straight-played historical books. Though I did try to give the feeling that women were very much part of Iran's fight as well. I really like this quote:

 

"At the front of the chamber, they turned to face the assembly, tore away their veils, and announced their intention to kill their husbands, their sons, and themselves if just rule and national independence died before them."

 

I did read a lot about how the Shah was kept in power by the US, and yeah, they pretty much put him there to begin with. I don't know if they told him to do all the roadbuilding and stuff, though, but it was obviously a bid to make Iran more westernized. I thought that would have been really good, actually, if he wasn't such a jerk about it. It reminds me of Russia razing all those houses without compensation during the Winter Olympics, only that's for a decidedly petty purpose.

 

I don't think I agree with that dealing with tyrants for mutual profit is okay. Whatever oppressions they do that make them a tyrant are only going to be bolstered by that money and our sanctions. We're just hurting a ton of people for the profit of the few, like with banana republics. Meddling directly is the same thing, except we're actually in the place and telling people they should be like us rather than implying it.

 

After World War I, the middle-east was divided based on profit the Allies could make. There were the A, B, Red, and Blue zones. Color zones were indirectly controlled, and the letter zones were directly controlled; those were the ones that had ports. I think it's pretty much the same in this case, though we never held blatantly direct control. We had indirect control over Iran for oil, and that caused a lot of suffering.

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Posted (edited)

I take it back. I don't think it's okay to deal with tyrants, but it's better than meddling and trying to topple them. Because meddling is always bad, in my opinion. I think the US only topples someone (or keeps them in power) because it's profitable. Meddling starts looking like imperialism really quickly. Progress and the misplaced desire to help the oppressed of another sovereign nation are pretty much the cousins of imperialism.

That's weird that Russia did all that without compensation. In the US, actually, imminent domain is pretty sketchy, too. There are lists, public lists on the internet, of how much domestic homes would hypothetically be worth in compensation if the government needed the land. And the government also recently stated that on top of their adequately understandable reasons for imminent domain, that economic growth is a legit reason to tear down someone's house and give them the bare minimum of its worth.

Edited by Iargely Iegendry (see edit history)

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